Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Season’s greetings from our family’s winter compound, where I spent the weekend!

Well, here I am now in frigid Milwaukee, where I woke up to 0F this morning, and after the short jaunt from the hotel entrance to my rental car, you could have used my frozen-solid eyeballs to cool your beverage this evening.

Not that it’s that much better back in Seattle, where their lows are in the ‘teens.  (I can sympathize - many of my lows were in my teens as well.)  I think that once it drops below 40F, however, the misery is only a matter of degree.

In the bonus round this afternoon, it snowed about 2″, and I may have to go out later and tromp around in it.

Meanwhile, I’m having a chicken wrap and a chardonnay in the hotel bar.  This hotel seems to have a long-term arrangement with several black religious organizations, and there are often conferences in the meeting rooms adjacent to the bar attended by folks who are something of an anachronism, from a west coast point of view, dressed to the nines and very mannered.

Their meetings are spirited, and their exclamations occasionally punctuate the Stevie Ray Vaughn and Lynyrd Skynyrd bar soundtrack.

As they adjourn and walk past the bar to their cars, the husbands lag behind the wives just a beat, and cast fugitive, wistful glances in our direction.

(Well, the glances are definitely fugitive;  the “wistful” may be a projection)